Something few LinkedIn marketers admit but know is true: LinkedIn has been rigged for quite some time.

LinkedIn’s 360Brew AI Algorithm changes this for ever…

The truth for most social media platforms has always been “post good content, solve people’s problems, and you’ll find your audience.”

Something about LinkedIn in particular meant this is harder to achieve on the platform, while a select cast of seemingly priveleged LinkedIn characters (gurus) pop up on our feeds time and time again making it look easy, telling us it’s easy, and making us feel as though we’re doing something wrong.

Company pages are a separate problem, but also fall victim to the same root cause. Admittedly, most company pages do not share good content or follow best practices, but even the good ones struggle with engagement.

The thing is, none of this is necessarily LinkedIn’s fault. Rather, the LinkedIn growth gurus had figured out how to game the algorithm, which left little room for anyone else. Either play their engagement games, or you’re in Lonely Town.

Thankfully, LinkedIn noticed this problem and has just tore up its old ranking system and dropped its new version - 360Brew.

In this post, I’m breaking down what it is, how it works, and what you can do about it.

What’s happening:

360Brew is a single AI model that now decides what shows up in your feed, who sees your posts, and even which jobs land in front of you. This represents a full rebuild of how LinkedIn works.

For years, the platform ran on a patchwork of small algorithms - one for the feed, another for jobs, another for search. They weren’t aligned, and they were manual-heavy. 360Brew replaces all of them with one giant model that reads text, interprets meaning, and learns from your behavior.

That means your posts aren’t going to be pushed out because you posted at the “right time.” They’re pushed if they’re relevant, and they’ll go to a group of people who will actually care.

Frequency, timing, tagging sprees, engagement pods, “viral formats”… all of that is losing power fast.

The results of this are already playing out: previous big name content creators are losing reach. These are mostly the “how to grow on LinkedIn” people whose posts were deliberately gamed.

They way these creators played the system was to overload early engagement on their posts - sometimes using bots and sometimes using artificial engagement pods - which triggered the algorithm into pushing these posts out to literally everyone on the platform.

360Brew means it’s Game Over for them.

To be clear, it’s not the end of ‘how to grow on LinkedIn’ creators. The good ones will still have an audience. from The Fold put together a great piece on this on what it means for creators.

It does mean, however, that their posts won’t necessarily show on all of our feeds - unless you are a user that engages with that type of content.

In short: LinkedIn is no longer distributing broadly. It’s distributing precisely. Post about a topic, and those interested in that topic will see it.

What This Means for You…

360Brew is prioritising topic alignment, clarity and authentic behaviour across profiles, pages and networks.

For marketing teams, this means that growth no longer comes from volume or “algorithm-friendly formatting,” but from consistent expertise and fully aligned brand activity across the organization and individuals.

The system now evaluates your brand’s identity over time - not just one post. It looks at:

• What your company consistently talks about

• Which audiences engage with it

• Who inside the company is part of those conversations

• How employees behave across their own networks

Your ongoing “activity pattern” - across the brand, executives and subject-matter experts - becomes the signal that teaches LinkedIn where your content belongs and who is likely to benefit from it.

This also means precision beats scale. LinkedIn is no longer distributing broadly to chase reactions or quick reach. Viral posts are deprioritised if they’re not relevant to a user, even if they’ve performed well at scale. For brands, the strategic goal shifts from “high visibility” to “high contextual visibility” - being visible to the right people, not everyone.

Importantly, smaller individuals and new company pages can now compete more effectively. If your subject matter is focused, useful and clearly tied to a defined expertise, you don’t need a huge follower base for LinkedIn to surface your content. Relevance signals outweigh distribution history.

The losers? Any strategy built on shortcuts: hashtags for reach, reciprocal commenting groups, templated AI posts, manufactured engagement, or keyword stuffing. 360Brew isn’t ranking patterns - it’s interpreting meaning. Manipulation sends negative quality signals.

And here’s something we should all think about:

Broad interest pages.

Does your company page cover a multitude of products, across market segments and topical interests?

If so, there may need to be some thought on how to realign your strategy specifically for this new LinkedIn environment.

What You Should Do Next

1. Tighten your positioning and narrative

Your company page description, messaging hierarchy and product narratives must align with the topics you want LinkedIn to associate you with. If the platform can’t clearly connect your brand to a defined expertise area, your organic reach will underperform.

2. Increase content clarity

Focussed topical content will outperform multiple interest. Focus on clarity, utility and distinctive perspective.

Have a wildcard product or service that doesn’t necessarily fit with what your company is best known for? For example: an investment management company known for American markets, but also has an emerging market team? They may want to use a separate page, or utilize individual influencer profiles instead for non-core offerings.

3. Go deep AND broad

Define two or three priority themes that directly connect to your commercial objectives and stay there. Think long-term: LinkedIn is now tracking topic consistency to determine which audiences you “belong” with.

4. Build conversations, not campaigns

Thoughtful dialogue is now a relevance trigger. Quality comments from internal experts, partners or customers carry more value than surface-level reactions. Content that is saved, referenced or discussed outperforms content that is merely liked.

5. Shape your network intentionally

Your company’s reach is shaped not just by what you publish, but by who from your organisation engages and where. Strategic outbound engagement - from brand accounts and subject-matter experts - teaches the model which communities your brand should be visible inside.

LinkedIn 360Brew: the bottom line

While a lot of the LinkedIn influencers are in disarray about their disappearing reach, this reset is a good thing overall. It levels the playing field, meaning: good targeted content will be shared with those who will be interested in it.

It does follow the wider social media trend labelled the ‘TikTokification of the internet’ - whereby followers no longer matter and the whole thing becomes algorithmically driven.

And you might hate me for saying this: it probably also means video becomes more and more important.

LinkedIn’s 360Brew will reward clarity, expertise and genuine interaction. It punishes shortcuts. The creators and companies who win next will be the ones who communicate with intent, stay consistent in their topics, and deliver insights worth saving.

Shaun

P.S. - since we’re talking LinkedIn, let’s connect!

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If I look back to the beginning of my career, as I nervously slipped in and out of the office tower I where I worked in central London back in 2010, we may as well have been on a different planet.

Back then, I was in planning meetings with my CMO about whether or not we should launch a blog…

Fast forward to today, and we have a high percentage of marketers wondering what they are going to do with their careers because of AI. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are working out how to make their thing sound as if it’s ‘AI-enabled’.

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I am an AI optimist, and incredibly fortunate to sit in two worlds:

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This gives me access to the latest and greatest of AI technology, insight into how we will use it and what kind of impacts it might have.

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Like I said, I’m an AI optimist and am very excited about the future. I know there will be a big place for what we do, and companies will continue to rely on us to pull the growth levers, but we MUST educate ourselves on how to become native on AI tools.

I cannot stress this last part enough. Being the AI expert within your firm will be a non-negotiable for the future of marketing professionals.

But I understand not everyone feels the same, or is quite ready, so I’m refocussing Building Rocket Ships as a vehicle to help others make this transition:

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As a creator, I’ve built an audience of over 300,000 followers and 100 million views. It’s been a labour of love, and has taught me everything I know about really building community.

As a b2b marketing director, I’ve been in the trenches for over 15 years for businesses including BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Investec and more, while also working as a consultant to leading brands. In the consumer space, I’ve produced campaigns for helices of Lush, Tesla, Crerar Hotels, and even the US State Department.

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So, that’s Building Rocket Ships in a nutshell. I know the world is crazy, but I truly feel that the future is exciting.

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